25971: Simidor (reply) Re: 25958: Koleva (Comment): Simidor, Delva, and the crucifix of "objective" journalism (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: daniel simidor <danielsimidor@yahoo.com>

Dear Ms. Koleva,

I want in the first place to present my sympathy in
light of what happened to you in Belair.  This is the
kind of horror that thousands and thousands of people
dread everyday.  You survived that encounter with a
little luck, but mostly because of who you are.
Jacques Roche was tortured and killed because of who
he was, a journalist with enough courage and foresight
to have denounced Aristide?s criminal game plan.
Guyler Delva has a better chance than most to go about
his business unscathed because of who he is, a
valuable asset in that he makes the Lavalas ?Grands
Mangeurs? look good.  Papa Doc was fond of saying that
?The revolution will devour its own sons.?  But Delva
again is lucky: he?s just a hired hand.

There are those in the Lavalas structure with genocide
on the brain, who are lining up their forces for a
?race? or a ?class? war ? the two usually mean the
same in Haiti?s muddled history.  A war of the
have-not to exterminate those who have.  Not even with
the excuse of an egalitarian society at the other end,
but merely so that the Lavalas hierarchy can become
the new bourgeoisie.  As if Jacmel in 1800 wasn?t
enough.  As if Miragoane in 1883 wasn?t enough.  There
is a Haitian saying, ?Twice is enough, three times
it?s a sin.?  The Haitian people do not want this
particular sin on their conscience.  That?s why two
million of them have already registered to vote, in
spite of Lavalas? campaign intimidation.  The people
are defying Lavalas? interdiction against the
elections ? except in Cité Soleil and the surrounding
slums where Lavalas gangs make such operations
impossible.  That?s part of the story Delva didn?t
tell.

As I wrote to someone else off list, it?s not so much
the details of what Delva writes, but the stories he
chooses to tell or to silence.  Your rebuttal deals
mostly with the details, not with the larger calculus
of misconceptions I?m concerned with.  But let?s go
back to the story Delva is willing to tell: the
elections that Lavalas have now joined as part of
their strategy of playing both sides of the coin.
Let?s assume the elections take place without a
bloodbath.  Either Lavalas lose and denounce the
elections as a fraud, and Operation Baghdad is back on
track with a vengeance (and there will be any number
of ?ti-blan? to uphold Lavalas lawlessness as ?popular
insurrection?).  Or let?s assume that Jerry Jean-Juste
or René Préval becomes the next president.  Then what?
 Will the gangs disarm?  Will the kidnappings end?  Or
will the Lavalas thugs go back to their government
jobs, back to using police uniforms and equipment to
carry out their trade?  Either way, the country will
inch closer to meltdown and to the new colonialism
different voices are calling for.

Your post touches indirectly on two important aspects
of the larger calculus I referred to.  The first
relates to your own kidnapping, to the violence and
the countless crimes committed in Lavalas' name.  At
random, that story includes the reports about South
African mercenaries on their way to Haiti, the recent
civilian backlash against gang bangers in
Croix-des-Bouquets, Solino and Belair, the gang rapes
of women and children, the ransoming of street
vendors.  But that story has not been written, because
those incidents did not occur in the separate reality
Delva shares with the Lavalas bosses and their fellow
travelers.

The second aspect is related to your interview in Cap
Haitien with workers from the Marnier-Lapostelle
orange fields.  Batay Ouvriye, the workers'
organization that unionized the Marnier-Lapostelle
workers describes in a newsletter some of the
struggles they're engaged in: efforts by sharecroppers
in La Gonave and the Northwest to get the government
to uphold the "3 shares" clause from the Code Rural;
the struggle by the SOCOWA union to get justice for
union activists beaten by company guards at the CODEVI
plant run by Dominican capitalists in Ouanaminthe; the
creation of workers-led neighborhood committees in
Cap-Haitien to guard against the Lavalas gangs that
ransom the population ("forcing them to pay for
state-distributed water, stealing taxes from low
income street vendors, etc").  Stories about those
struggles from below seldom appear in the mainstream
press.  Instead, in Delva's case, we are regaled with
story after story with a positive spin on Lavalas.  If
the man is not partisan, he must be singularly
misinformed or lazy.

Lastly, I do not agree with the notion of a lower
standard of objectivity for Haiti.  To the extent that
objectivity is really about telling the truth, and not
the absurd notion that reporters are somehow
unaffected or not involved in the story they tell, I
don't think the Haitian press is faring too badly.






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